Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Look into my mind

Ever wondered what?s going on in the tiny mind of a newborn baby, or how a footballer takes that perfect kick? Or even why brain scanning kits often look like mental torture instruments from a sci-fi B-movie?

What stands out about these systems is far greater clarity ? you can actually see a 3-D map of individual blood vessels and tell from the colour how oxygenated the blood is. They are also safe enough to be used continuously, unlike other imaging methods.

One such device uses optical tomography to assess brain function in newborn and premature babies, by measuring the flight times of photons across the head. The result is 3-D images of blood volume and oxygenation.

The device was on display at the Royal Society?s Summer Science Exhibition in London. Other devices on display could be used to map how tumours develop by tracking blood vessel growth, and another tool ?looks? through the muscles on your limbs to provide information on how we use them.

?We?ve looked at the brain of a footballer and found that when he prepared for a kick, his brain and the muscles he was about to use in his leg both had increased blood flow,? says UCL researcher Clare Elwell. She says that sports trainers could use the device to help footballers who were preparing to use the wrong muscles.

But could they rig it up to stop you hitting your own thumb with a hammer? What other uses might it have? Let me know in the comments below.

Personally I have a lot of trouble concentrating. I'm too easily distracted at work (hence this). I do karate but I've pretty poor balance, usually forget certain moves and so on. Maybe things like this will offer insight into our sense of coordination and how we control our bodies.

Real-time scanning of the brain performing cognitive tasks might allow determination of a common 'mentalese' used by people in pre-verbal processing, thus verifying (or not) Noam Chomsky's ideas from years ago. Alternatively it might lead to 'thought-writers' easier to use than the brain-wave controlled machines currently being trialled for quadriplegics.

And of course it might allow a total brain-recording to be achieved, thus preserving our mental states for future upload into suitable android-form. Of course to store all that data will need better media than current DVDs and magnetic-disk drives - perhaps the 50 terabytes predicted for optical memory based on bacterial rhodopsin will be the way forward? Or some kind of carbon nanotube 3-D memory?

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